class="i1">Come, bind up those ringlet showers!
Roses for that dreaming brow!
Come, once more that ancient lightness,
Glancing feet, and eager eyes!
Let your broad lamps flash the brightness
Which the sorrow-stricken day denies!
Through black depths of serried shadows,
Up cold aisles of buried glade;
In the midst of river meadows
Where the looming kine are laid;
From your dazzled windows streaming,
From your humming festal room,
Deep and far, a broken gleaming
Reels and shivers on the ruffled gloom.
Where I stand, the grass is glowing:
Doubtless you are passing fair:
But I hear the north wind blowing;
And I feel the cold night-air.
Can I look on your sweet faces,
And your proud heads backward thrown,
From this dusk of leaf-strewn places
With the dumb woods and the night alone?
But, indeed, this flux of guesses—
Mad delight, and frozen calms—
Mirth to-day and vine-bound tresses,
And to-morrow—folded palms—
Is this all? this balanc’d measure?
Could life run no easier way?
Happy at the noon of pleasure,
Passive, at the midnight of dismay?
But, indeed, this proud possession—
This far-reaching magic chain,
Linking in a mad succession
Fits of joy and fits of pain:
Have you seen it at the closing?
Have you track’d its clouded ways?
Can your eyes, while fools are dozing,
Drop, with mine, adown life’s latter days?
When a dreary light is wading
Through this waste of sunless greens—
When the flashing lights are fading
On the peerless cheek of queens—
When the mean shall no more sorrow
And the proudest no more smile—
While the dawning of the morrow
Widens slowly westward all that while?
Then, when change itself is over,
When the slow tide sets one way,
Shall you find the radiant lover,
Even by moments, of to-day?
The eye wanders, faith is failing:
O, loose hands, and let it be!
Proudly, like a king bewailing,
O, let fall one tear, and set us free!
All true speech and large avowal
Which the jealous soul concedes:
All man’s heart—which brooks bestowal:
All frank faith—which passion breeds:
These we had, and we gave truly:
Doubt not, what we had, we gave:
False we were not, nor unruly:
Lodgers in the forest and the cave.
Long we wander’d with you, feeding
Our sad souls on your replies:
In a wistful silence reading
All the meaning of your eyes:
By moss-border’d statues sitting,
By well-heads, in summer days.
But we turn, our eyes are flitting.
See, the white east, and the morning rays!
And you too, O weeping Graces,
Sylvan Gods of this fair shade!
Is there doubt on divine faces?
Are the happy Gods dismay’d?
Can men worship the wan features,
The sunk eyes, the wailing tone,
Of unspher’d, discrownèd creatures,
Souls as little godlike as their own?
Come, loose hands! The wingèd fleetness
Of immortal feet is gone.
And your scents have shed their sweetness,
And your flowers are overblown.
And your jewell’d gauds surrender
Half their glories to the day:
Freely did they flash their splendour,
Freely gave it—but it dies away.
In the pines the thrush is waking—
Lo, yon orient hill in flames:
Scores of true love knots are breaking
At divorce which it proclaims.
When the lamps are pal’d at morning,
Heart quits heart, and hand quits hand.
—Cold in that unlovely dawning,
Loveless, rayless, joyless you shall stand.
Strew no more red roses, maidens,
Leave the lilies in their dew:
Pluck, pluck cypress, O pale maidens!
Dusk, O dusk the hall with yew!
—Shall I seek, that I may scorn her,
Her I lov’d at eventide?
Shall I ask, what faded mourner
Stands, at daybreak, weeping by my side?
Pluck, pluck cypress, O pale maidens!
Dusk the hall with yew!
Desire2
Thou, who dost dwell alone—
Thou, who dost know thine own—
Thou, to whom all are known
From the cradle to the grave—
Save, oh, save.
From the world’s temptations,
From tribulations;
From that fierce anguish
Wherein we languish;
From that torpor deep
Wherein we lie asleep,
Heavy as death, cold as the grave;
Save, oh, save.
When the Soul, growing clearer,
Sees God no nearer:
When the Soul, mounting higher,
To God comes no nigher:
But the arch-fiend Pride
Mounts at her side,
Foiling her high emprize,
Sealing her eagle eyes,
And, when she fain would soar,
Makes idols to adore;
Changing the pure emotion
Of her high devotion,
To a skin-deep sense
Of her own eloquence:
Strong to deceive, strong to enslave—
Save, oh, save.
From the ingrain’d fashion
Of this earthly nature
That mars thy creature.
From grief, that is but passion;
From mirth, that is but feigning;
From tears, that bring no healing;
From wild and weak complaining;
Thine old strength revealing,
Save, oh, save.
From doubt, where all is double:
Where wise men are not strong:
Where comfort turns to trouble:
Where just men suffer wrong:
Where sorrow treads on joy:
Where sweet things soonest cloy:
Where faiths are built on dust:
Where Love is half mistrust,
Hungry, and barren, and sharp as the sea;
Oh, set us free.
O let the false dream fly
Where our sick souls do lie
Tossing continually.
O where thy voice doth come
Let all doubts be dumb:
Let all words be mild:
All strifes be reconcil’d:
All pains beguil’d.
Light bring no blindness;
Love no unkindness;
Knowledge no ruin;
Fear no undoing.
From the cradle to the grave,
Save, oh, save.
The Voice
As the kindling glances,
Queen-like and clear,
Which the bright moon lances
From her tranquil sphere
At the sleepless waters
Of a lonely mere,
On the wild whirling waves, mournfully, mournfully,
Shiver and die.
As the tears of sorrow
Mothers have shed—
Prayers that to-morrow
Shall in vain be sped
When the flower they flow for
Lies frozen and dead—
Fall on the throbbing brow, fall on the burning breast,
Bringing no rest.
Like bright waves that fall
With a lifelike motion
On the lifeless margin of the sparkling Ocean:—
A wild rose climbing up a mould’ring wall—
A gush of
